http://www.guardian.co.uk/Lockerbie/Story/0,2763,513160,00.html
Inside story
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Flight from the truth
The Lockerbie trial was meant to end the saga of Pan Am flight 103. But it
didn't take into account the wads of US dollars, or the heroin, or the
Hizbullah T-shirt found in the wreckage. As the man convicted of the
bombing prepares to appeal, John Ashton and Ian Ferguson argue that there
has been a top-level cover-up
Special report: Lockerbie
Wednesday June 27, 2001
The Guardian
There are two versions of the Lockerbie story. One - told at the trial -
is neat, clearcut and, ultimately, reassuring. The other, which we believe
is the true story, is far less comfortable. In the official version it was
bad guys against good: Muammar Gadafy and his recently convicted henchman
Abdel Baset al-Megrahi versus the heroic international investigation led
by the tiny Dumfries and Galloway police force. It ends with the triumph
of justice over terror. In the alternative version the heroics of the cops
are obscured by dirty politics. It ends with a dreadful miscarriage of
justice.
The conviction of Megrahi (his co-accused, Al-Amin Khalifah Fhimah, was
acquitted) supposedly proved the official version and drew a line under
the Lockerbie saga. But the case will not go away: Megrahi is planning an
appeal and the relatives of the British passengers are determined to hold
the Labour government to their promise, made in opposition, of an
independent inquiry. If the relatives get their way, a huge can of worms
will be opened for, as our book reveals, almost from the night the plane
went down, vital evidence was suppressed.
In the official version, of course, nothing of the kind happened. It
posits that on December 21 1988 Megrahi placed a bomb in a suitcase, which
was loaded, unaccompanied, on to a flight from Malta to Frankfurt, where
it was transferred to Pan Am flight 103. It exploded over Lockerbie just
after 7pm that night, killing all 259 people on board and 11 on the
ground. The bomb was built into a Toshiba radio-cassette player and fitted
with a distinctive timing device supplied to the Libyan intelligence
service by a Swiss company, Mebo. The firm's Zurich offices were shared in
1988 with the Libyan company ABH, with which Megrahi was closely
involved. He was also alleged to have bought the clothes in the bomb
suitcase from the Mary's House shop in Malta on December 7 1988.
During the eight-month trial the prosecution could offer no direct
evidence of the bomb being loaded in Malta, and their star witnesses,
Abdul Majid Giaka - a former colleague of the two accused - was exposed as
a money-motivated fantasist. The court heard that Mebo sold identical
timers to the East German Stasi (which armed Middle East terrorist
groups), and the evidence of the Mary's House shopkeeper, Tony Gauci,
suggested that the man who bought the clothes was considerably older and
taller than Megrahi, and that the purchase occurred two weeks earlier,
when, it is believed, Megrahi had an alibi. The fact that the judges
refused to be swayed by the clouds of doubt hanging over the prosecution
case left many observers staggered.
In the alternative version, the real culprits lay not in Libya, but in
Iran, Syria and Lebanon. It begins in July 1988, when a US warship
accidentally shot down an Iranian airliner over the Persian Gulf, killing
290 people. The CIA later revealed that, within days, Iran hired the
Syrian-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General
Command (PFLP-GC) to avenge the incident. The group had close ties to the
Lebanese Islamic radicals Hizbullah and in the early 1970s specialised in
bombing airliners. Its favoured method was to plant carefully disguised
bombs on innocent dupes.
The group's leader, Ahmed Jibril, dispatched his right-hand man, Hafez
Dalkamoni, and a bomb-maker, Marwan Khreesat, to West Germany, where
Khreesat manufactured at least five barometric bombs designed to blow up
aircraft, two - possibly more - of which were built into Toshiba
radio-cassette players. Six weeks before Lockerbie, police raided the
PFLP-GC gang and found one of the Toshiba bombs. In the official version
this put an end to the revenge mission, but there is every reason to doubt
this. The PFLP-GC may not have relied solely on Khreesat to make bombs
and, in any case, at least four of his devices were unaccounted for. Three
were recovered four months after Lockerbie, but the second Toshiba was
never found.
Five weeks after the raid, the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) warned of
the continuing threat of an Iranian reprisal and noted that Middle Eastern
terrorist groups active in Germany had the infrastructure to conduct
bombings. At around the same time, the US state department circulated a
specific warning that radical Palestinians were planning to attack a Pan
Am target in Europe.
Three months after the bombing, the transport minister Paul Channon told
lobby journalists that the culprits had been identified and charges were
imminent. Everyone knew he meant the PFLP-GC. The months passed and
nothing happened. A White House leak later revealed that Margaret Thatcher
and George Bush had agreed to downplay the investigation for fear of
endangering hostages in Lebanon - almost all held by Syrian and Iranian
proxy groups. Following the Gulf war, in which Syria became a crucial
western ally, the PFLP-GC and their Syrian and Iranian sponsors were
officially exonerated, and the blame was shifted to Libya.
The alternative version becomes murkier still when it comes to how
Jibril's men got the bomb on to flight 103. Two PFLP-GC insiders and many
western intelligence sources claim it was planted in the luggage of Khalid
Jaafar, a Lebanese-American mule in a heroin trafficking operation. The
whistle-blowing spooks say elements within the CIA were allowing Middle
Eastern dealers to ship drugs to America in return for help in locating
and releasing US hostages. In allowing the suitcases containing heroin to
bypass security procedures, the CIA handed the dealers' terrorist
associates a failsafe means of getting the bomb on the plane.
Among the Lockerbie victims was a party of US intelligence specialists,
led by Major Charles McKee of the DIA, returning from an aborted
hostage-rescue mission in Lebanon. A variety of sources have claimed that
McKee, who was fiercely anti-drugs, got wind of the CIA's deals and was
returning to Washington to blow the whistle. A few months after Lockerbie,
reports emerged from Lebanon that McKee's travel plans had been leaked to
the bombers. The implication was that Flight 103 was targeted, in part,
because he was on board.
As with the official version, there is no proof of this scenario, but
there is a chain of circumstantial evidence. Much of it comes from the
army of police officers and volunteers who scoured the vast crash site in
the weeks after the bombing. And much of it was either not revealed at the
recent trial or, worse, covered up.
One such item was a T-shirt found in Kielder forest, Northumberland, by
David Clark, who was later told by police that it was potentially
important evidence because it bore the insignia of Hizbullah. The T-shirt
has never been officially acknowledged or explained. At least four large
quantities of US dollars were also found. No one knows who was carrying
the cash, but it has been speculated that McKee's team would have had
large amounts to pay Lebanese informants. When the Labour MP Tam Dalyell
asked about the cash finds in 1995, the Scottish Office minister, Lord
James Douglas-Hamilton, replied that nothing other than "what might
ordinarily be regarded as personal money" was found.
Also denied was the existence of two large quantities of what appeared to
be heroin: one found on Lockerbie golf course and the other in a suitcase
discovered by a farmer a couple of miles to the east. The Rev John Mosey,
whose 19-year-old daughter Helga died in the bombing, learned about the
latter find and assumed the farmer would be questioned at the Lockerbie
fatal accident inquiry held in October 1990. But the farmer did not
appear, and police witnesses denied that any drugs were found. Mosey
raised the issue with a senior police officer, who told him that the
farmer would be interviewed. To the best of Mosey's knowledge, this never
happened. In 1992 Dalyell wrote to the Scottish lord advocate, Lord Fraser
of Carmyllie, about the drugs. In his reply, Lord Fraser stated that none
had been found, save for a small quantity of cannabis.
Who engineered the cover-up? Almost certainly not anyone in
Britain. Police officers and volunteer searchers have spoken of American
agents removing items from the crash site. A proper inquiry into these
issues could reveal a picture that governments on both sides of the
Atlantic dare not face, but without it the echoes of the Lockerbie bomb
will be ringing for a long time to come.
Cover-up of Convenience - the Hidden Scandal of Lockerbie, by John Ashton
and Ian Ferguson, is published by Mainstream at 12.99. To order a copy for
9.99 plus p&p, call 0870 066 7979 or send your order with a UK cheque,
payable to The Guardian, to FREEPOST Books, LON3590, London W3 6BR. UK
delivery is 1.99 for first class or 99p for second class.